Comedian Joan Rivers passed away
last night at the age of 81 after
suffering from complications after
surgery on her vocal cords.
While the operation was reported to
be a “routine procedure” by ABC,
Rivers suffered severe complications,
including cardiac arrest, and was
transferred to Mount Sinai Hospital
in New York on the 28th of August.
The original procedure took place at
Yorkville Endoscopy Center, a state-
of-the-art facility that opened last
year.
Yorkville Endoscopy is now under
investigation, but wrongdoing is not
suspected.
After several weeks in intensive care,
during which she remained in a
medically-induced coma, Rivers was
moved to a private room. She died
the next day at 1.17pm local time.
Read more: How Joan Rivers
reversed her Osteoporosis
Rivers was no stranger to surgery,
having undergone numerous
cosmetic operations throughout her
lifetime. As written in the Guardian,
Rivers once joked ““I’ve had so
much plastic surgery, when I die
they’ll donate my body to
Tupperware.” She was also aware of
the risks, remarking in one of her
books about the topic that a leading
surgeon had once said to her “Joan,
even thoroughbreds trip.”
Surgery becomes exponentially more
dangerous as patient’s get older,
and the risk of complications from
even routine surgeries can become
very high. Data from the CDC
released in 2012 showed that
patients in the 75-84 year age group
were seven times more likely to die
from surgery than those aged
between 45 and 64.
Other health issues have plagued
Rivers over the past few decades,
including Osteoporosis, of which she
was a high-profile sufferer. When
she was first diagnosed with the
illness, the doctor told her that it
would kill her, she said in an
interview with Lifescript. She also
suffered from severe Bulimia in her
younger years, but recovered after
counselling.